TCS STATEMENT ON CREATION
At TCS, we believe all truth—about God, creation, and humanity—is revealed in the inerrant Word of God. In contrast to modern Scientism, we affirm that science depends on the foundations of Scripture, not the other way around. This article explains our rejection of evolution, our belief in a six-day creation, and our respect for the range of faithful Reformed views on Genesis 1.
We believe that the truth about God, our world, and what it means to be human is perfectly revealed to us in the inerrant word of God, the Bible. During the modern era, American educational institutions believed that free inquiry in science would lead to a knowledge of the truth, and many Christians assumed that would be the case. Over the course of the last 150 years, Scientism (the religion of science) became a primary form of spiritual rebellion against our Creator. This belief in free inquiry did not adequately recognize the effects of sin on the scientific mind. Reason is largely used by humans to justify whatever it is they want to believe or do. Science is no exception.
All science is built on unproven assumptions about the natural world. Therefore, science and Scripture are not two alternate paths to the truth about reality. Science is a body of knowledge built on the foundational assumptions given by the Scriptures. The Bible says the world was created by a rational, covenantal, and unchanging God. It was this theological worldview that led Christians to discover the early scientific discoveries of the Enlightenment. Any attempt for science to undermine the teaching of Scripture actually undermines the very foundations on which science was built:
All things seen and unseen were created by God out of nothing by the power of his Word.
God’s creation is very good.
He is the Almighty Sovereign over all that happens, ruling and ordering his creation according to his wise and holy purposes.
God created the earth in the space of six days, as recorded in Genesis 1.
God created all animals according to their kinds.
God created man by a unique act of creation from the dust of the earth, and the woman from the rib of the man.
God created the man and woman after his own image.
The Westminster Confession of Faith (our doctrinal standard) says this about creation:
It pleased God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, for the manifestation of the glory of His eternal power, wisdom, and goodness, in the beginning, to create or make of nothing the world, and all things therein, whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days, and all very good. (WCF 4.1)
Evolution has been the dominant theory of origin by which modern secularists have argued that the Bible is false, thus being a primary vehicle for leading our society into unbelief. Therefore, TCS takes a strong position against any form of evolution as explanatory regarding life on earth.
Evolution is a modern origins myth that is not only hostile to the revelation of the Bible but has also been shown to be false scientifically. The fossil record uncovered over the past 150 years does not reveal a gradual connection between species, but fossil types appear in clumps, suggesting something much closer to the Bible’s teaching that God created living beings “according to their kind” (Gen. 1:21-25).
Evolution should not be regarded as a scientific theory, as it can in no way be tested using the scientific method. There is no repeatable experiment that can verify its claims. It should be regarded as something closer to natural history.
Evolution is not simply a natural history, but it plays a role in our culture as a story about the meaning of life, emphasizing survival of the fittest (“the strong eat the weak”). This is contrary to the Bible’s vision of the Creator God being a fountain of goodness and life and the creation being a gift of divine grace. Evolution is a worldview hostile to Christianity.
We recognize that the questions about the origins of life and the age of the earth are two very different questions (though related in the minds of many). While we reject evolution as a theory, we do recognize that the earth bears the marks of being very old, which raises honest questions about how that squares with Genesis 1. As a ministry of Christ Church Bellingham, a member church of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), we agree with the PCA’s published study committee paper on Creation that recommends a mutual respect for four different readings of Genesis 1 within the church:
Literal six, 24-hour day creation
Day Age theory (the six days represent long periods of time in consecutive order)
Analogical week (Genesis 1 is making an analogy between God’s work week and ours, but is not a literal description of how God formed the earth)
Framework Hypothesis (this is a literary structure for Genesis 1 that can actually work with any of the other three views)
As Augustine wrote, “Let each one, then, take it as he pleases, for it is so profound a passage that it may well suggest, for the exercise of the reader’s tact, many opinions, and none of them widely departing from the rule of faith” (Augustine, City of God, Book XI.32). The preference of CCB and TCS is the literal 24-hour creation view, as it seems to be Moses’ intent in writing it (see Exodus 20:8–11). We also respect these other views, and in our science classes students will learn some of the reasons why it seems the earth bears marks of being very old. Just as the wine that Jesus made out of water instantly would have bore the marks of aged wine, we believe it is not a contradiction to say that the earth was made in the space of six literal days less than 10,000 years ago and still bears the marks of being very old. For “with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8).
We also recognize that the Bible does not give much information about what exactly unfolded in God’s creation of the earth. We are content with the limits of human knowledge, and we worship and trust God as the Lord of his creation. Ecclesiastes 3:11 tells us, “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”
